Family Pictures

Every Thanksgiving we try to get pictures of our family to use for our Christmas card.  This year we had a our very own family photographer-Anne!  She has a nice Nikon camera and has taken a class so we took advantage of her free services.  :)  She took some fantastic pictures and our card turned out better than we expected. 

We are Thankful

Wow-so behind, yet again!  Here's a quick update on November:

Jules had a Thanksgiving feast at preschool the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  They performed a few songs and then we had a wonderful lunch provided by the parents at The Day School.  Jules enjoyed showing David around her school and her classroom.  She truly loves going to school and we couldn't be happier with her wonderful teachers.

 digging in

with Mrs. Aylor, her teacher

We had a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving in Lexington with the Ellingtons.  We headed up Wednesday afternoon and enjoyed spending the rest of the holiday week with family, including David's parents, Peter and Anne who, along with Anne's parents, drove in from Cincinnati.

Thanksgiving day brought us beautiful weather and delicious food!  We have much to be thankful for and we truly enjoyed sharing the day with family.  It was a nice, relaxing holiday and we even squeezed in a quick photo shoot for our Christmas cards-thanks to our budding photographer, Anne! 

yummy Thanksgiving meal

Family Picture

David and I made the mistake of heading to Walmart Thanksgiving day evening to pick up a few items that were going on sale before Black Friday.  NEVER AGAIN!  It was a mob scene and people were literally fighting over items.  It was ridiculous and while I was happy with my purchases, I will certainly not be doing that ever again at Walmart.  Especially since I got great deals online on Black Friday!  No crazy people, no lines, just nice and easy-point and click and done!

On Saturday, David and I headed to Charlottesville for the UVa game.  We should have known it was going to be a bad day when the car got a flat tire coming down off Afton Mountain.  Regardless of the outcome, we had a great time tailgating with friends and watching UVa play their last regular game of the season.  :)   Looking forward to watching them in a bowl game this year!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving with their families!  We certainly did!  And now let the Christmas craziness begin....

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

We had another wonderful Halloween party at our house this year!  The kids played games like pumpkin bowling, candy corn toss and ghost donuts before heading out to trick-or-treat.  Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate and we ended up with soggy kids!  Hope your Halloween was happy!  

 pumpkin bowling

 ghost donuts

 apparently its good!

she ate the whole thing!

 whose ready to go trick-or-treating?  "Meeee!"

 super cute princess and duck

drenched but having fun!

Preschool and Terry

Juliann is LOVING preschool!  The week before Halloween has been her favorite so far.  She had a Halloween parade and party at school and to top it all off, she was able to bring home Terry the Turtle, her classroom mascot.

 digging in

 she ate the WHOLE thing!

goofing off with her teacher, Mrs. Aylor

Jules was line leader for her parade

Terry was a busy turtle while he was with us.  He enjoyed eating his first Reese Cup Blizzard while watching the trains in Ashland, went to the Children's Museum in Short Pump, tagged along to a Halloween party at a friends, went to trunk-or-treat at at the church where Jules goes to preschool, and attended our Halloween party before heading out trick-or-treating in our neighborhood.  Jules loved having Terry visiting with us and can't wait until he comes home with her again.   

 Terry helped cook dinner

 Terry checking out the trains

Riding the train at CMOR

 Trunk-or-Treating with Terry

 Quack, Quack!

Halloween post to come tomorrow!

Jack-O-Lanterns

We carved our pumpkins almost a week before Halloween and luckily they all made it to the big day!  Jules had a lot of fun this year helping David but Josie was not a fan of the pumpkin guts.  Take a look at our family carving projects:

 digging in

 Let me try...

"NO, NO, NO, EW!"

 Love these two!

helping Daddy carve

Unfortunately, we didn't get any final product pictures!  But we had a great time in the process.  :)

Apple Picking X2

We obviously didn't get enough apples when we went in September so we headed back to Carter's Mountain before a UVa football game to pick some more.  This time the pink ladies were out and they were DELICIOUS!  It was also crazy busy!  We waited in a line of cars just to get up the mountain and the line for apple donuts was even worse.  They were totally worth the wait though.  :)

 This picture doesn't do the traffic situation justice!

We joined the Ayers family on our second trip to the orchard and David's mom, who had to get her car fixed in Charlottesville came with us as well.

 beautiful view!

Jules and her BFF

Most of the apples had been picked on the low branches so we had to get creative to get some of the really pink ones.  What started off as Jules standing on David's shoulders turned into me breaking out some old cheerleading moves and getting on David's shoulders.  Totally worth it though because we got some super yummy apples.  :)

 Jules getting a lift from daddy

 Enjoying a free tasting!

 YUM!

 All the kiddos

Trying to reach the really pink apples

After picking apples and eating some lunch, we headed over to a tailgate with David's Aunt, Uncle and Cousins before the UVa football game.  Although UVa didn't win, we had another fun and beautiful day in C'ville!

 Josie tailgating

 Group shot

Jules and Susan

Someone had a little too much fun!